In addition to Universal Analytics active users metrics, Google Analytics 4 offers a few more metrics that allow you to understand how sticky your product is. Some of them are user stickiness, daily active users (DAU), weekly active users (WAU) and monthly active users (MAU). 

All of them are highly connected between themselves. These metrics help you determine how often your existing users use your website, app or product and how your actions impact their willingness to return. 

As you know, the cost of acquiring a new user is usually higher than the cost of returning the existing user on your website. Therefore, having these metrics in GA4 and using them as a leading indicator can help you build a sustainable business. 

What’s user activity over time (DAU/WAU/MAU) in GA4?

As mentioned in my articles about user engagement and user types, Google Analytics 4 core metric is “Active users”. 

In a nutshell, this metric includes two audiences: new users and returning users that made at least one session with more than 10 seconds of engagement time. 

This metric is used among many GA4 standard reports, which makes it the most crucial metric to understand for someone who uses GA4 daily. 

Besides that, there are two other charts that we are going to talk about in this article which show statistics and metrics built on the “Active users” metric. 

Two of them are located in GA4 -> Reports -> Engagement -> Overview: “User activity over time” and “User stickiness”. Let’s start with the first one. 

GA4 User Activity, User Stickiness, DAU/WAU/MAU
GA4 user activity metrics: user stickiness, DAU/WAU/MAU

“User activity over time” shows three metrics:

  • Number of active users on the specific date / 1-day active users or Daily Active Users (DAU)
  • Number of active users within the last 7 days  / 7-day active users or Weekly Active Users (WAU)
  • Number of active users within the last 30 days / 30-day active users or Monthly Active Users (MAU)

The first metric presents the “Active users” metric that you can find in other GA4 reports, for instance, in the “Traffic Acquisition” report, or you can discover the same metric in GA4 Explore.  

Active users metric in Ga4 Traffic report
“Active users” metric in GA4 Traffic Acquisition report

The other two metrics on the “User activity over time” chart present the same metric but under a different time range where the end date is the date you see on the “User activity over time” chart. 

You can see it on the small info pop-up: “7 days ending Aug 4, 2023”. 

What’s GA4 user stickiness, and why it’s an essential product metric?

The second chart in Engagement Overview is “User stickiness”. 

GA4 User Activity, User Stickiness, DAU/WAU/MAU
User stickiness report is on the right side

GA4 user stickiness is one of the ratios of two active users metrics:

  • daily active users (DAU) to weekly active users (WAU)
  • daily active users (DAU) to monthly active users (MAU)
  • weekly active users (WAU) to monthly active users (MAU)

It’s the main reason why you see “DAU/MAU”, “DAU/“WAU”, and “WAU/MAU” abbreviations on the “User stickiness” chart. 

So, to calculate “DAU/WAU”, for instance, you should take 1-day active users and 7-day active users metrics from the “User activity over time” chart.

DAU/WAU = 1-day active users / 7-day active users * 100%

In our case, 2637 / 24671 * 100% = 10.7%

User Stickiness is a widely used metric for measuring user engagement that shows you how often your users return to your product (website, app, SaaS) because it’s engaging and valuable to them.

A sticky product becomes a part of your users’ daily lives; they use it more frequently and return to it more often. As a result, your product has more active users and generates more revenue. 

Note: There are no “DAU”, “WAU”, and “MAU” metrics in GA4 Explore at the moment of writing this article. You should use the “Active users” metric instead. Perhaps, Google will add these metrics in future. 

It’s also worth mentioning that selecting the correct ratio depends on the business type. For instance, mobile game app can consider selecting “DAU/WAU” when the ecommerce company can select “DAU/MAU” as the primary product (user) stickiness metric. 

It highly depends on how often users are ready to return to you. If you sell shoes, the user can return to your website once per 6-18 months and you shouldn’t expect to see it more often, if you are a game mobile app company, you can expect to see users daily or a few times per week. 

Because of that, different user stickiness benchmarks exist for different businesses. Whenever you check the benchmark, make sure that you select your niche. 

Final Word 

Google Analytics 4 has more user activity metrics than Universal Analytics. Some of them are daily active users, paid daily active users and user stickiness.

User Stickiness is a widely used metric for measuring user engagement that shows how often your users return to your product (website, app, SaaS) because it’s engaging and valuable to them.

Although the GA4 user stickiness metric is an excellent addition to users’ arsenal of user behaviour metrics, it’s still based on engaged sessions and user types instead of user core actions; therefore, it lacks a core functionality to be used as a leading indicator for SaaS and mobile apps.

Whenever you analyse the product stickiness, you should look at users’ actions, whether users perform the core activity on your website, product or mobile app. GA4 has an alternative to daily active users as paid daily active users, but it’s viable only for ecommerce businesses. 

If you are a SaaS product or a mobile app, consider connecting GA4 to BigQuery and building your custom product stickiness metric there.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is user stickiness in GA4?

User Stickiness is a widely used metric for measuring user engagement that shows you how often your users return to your product (website, app, SaaS) because it’s engaging and valuable to them.

What are DAU, WAU and MAU in GA4?

1. Daily Active Users (DAU) – number of active users on a specific day
2. Weekly Active Users (WAU) – number of active users during the specific 7 days
3. Monthly Active Users (MAU) – number of active users during the specific 30 days

What’s user activity over time in GA4?

“User activity over time” chart shows three metrics:
1. Number of active users on the specific date / 1-day active users or Daily Active Users (DAU)
2. Number of active users within the last 7 days  / 7-day active users or Weekly Active Users (WAU)
3. Number of active users within the last 30 days / 30-day active users or Monthly Active Users (MAU)

Written By

Ihar Vakulski

With over 8 years of experience working with SaaS, iGaming, and eCommerce companies, Ihar shares expert insights on building and scaling businesses for sustainable growth and success.

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